When I noted that John McCain’s lobbyist gal had represented the two networks that would, in 2004, show the anti-Kerry propaganda piece, Stolen Honor, I admitted I didn’t know precisely whether or how John McCain had helped the second of these two networks, Sinclair Broadcasting’s shell company, Glencairn Broadcasting. Today, the NYT makes it very clear that McCain used the same kind of inappropriate, pushy tactics for Sinclair as he had with Paxson.

In late 1998, Senator John McCain sent an unusually blunt letter to the head of the Federal Communications Commission, warning that he would try to overhaul the agency if it closed a broadcast ownership loophole.

The letter, and two later ones signed by Mr. McCain, then chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, urged the commission to abandon plans to close a loophole vitally important to Glencairn Ltd., a client of Vicki Iseman, a lobbyist. The provision enabled one of the nation’s largest broadcasting companies, Sinclair, to use a marketing agreement with Glencairn, a far smaller broadcaster, to get around a restriction barring single ownership of two television stations in the same city.

I gotta say, "unusually blunt," coming from Mr. Straight Talk for Lobbyists Express is saying something. The article goes on to note that McCain was partnering with Conrad Burns on this matter–some real gutter diving for a guy who claims to be above corruption.

The NYT article suggests more about the relationship between Iseman and McCain.

For its part, Glencairn appeared to have been getting little support in Congress until it retained Ms. Iseman in 1998.

Edwin Edwards, who was the president of the company at the time, said in a recent interview that after retaining Ms. Iseman, he was able to get heard by Mr. McCain.

“We were pounding the pavement in Washington,” Mr. Edwards said. “We recruited help from as many people as we could. We knocked on every door just trying to get support.”

Labaton suggests–but doesn’t say it–that companies with business interests before McCain could hire Iseman as the best way to get entre to him. Buy Vicki Iseman and you get McCain. No wonder she was bragging about her access to him.

There are two things that Labaton doesn’t say, but that are fairly clear. McCain intervened to help Sinclair keep its shell company. This was no mere marketing agreement to help a struggling broadcaster survive, this was an attempt to get around the law.

Sinclair operates six LMAs through a company called Cunningham Broadcasting, previously known as Glencairn Ltd. Cunningham is controlled by trusts in the name of Carolyn Smith, the mother of Sinclair president and CEO David Smith, as well as two Sinclair vice presidents, Duncan Smith and Frederick Smith, and Robert Smith, a director on Sinclair’s board.

The FCC established LMAs in the early-1990s to assist failing stations or to help start-ups share costs for such expenses as maintenance and advertising with older, established broadcasters.

However, Schwartzman says Sinclair used these business arrangements for the sole intention of eventually acquiring the stations themselves. "Sinclair has operated these LMAs as little more than a fig leaf for all but owning them outright," he said. "They’ve been pressed on this but unfortunately this FCC has let them off the hook."

This is the kind of activity that–if its purpose were to channel money, rather than broadcast signal–would be called money laundering. McCain helped a company evade the clear intent of the law, and in so doing, really concentrate its reach for such a moment when it might want to use its stations as a propaganda vehicle.

And then there’s the sheer hypocrisy of it. Five years later, when Sinclair used its concentration to smear a military hero, McCain blamed that smear not on the motivations of the family running Sinclair or those bankrolling the propaganda, but on the concentration of Sinclair’s company.

"I do have an opinion that this is an issue that results when you have media concentration, which I have been opposed to," he said at a fund-raiser for Sen. Arlen Specter (R., Pa.). "When you have media concentration – this is the largest TV owner with 62 stations – this is something that happens." [my emphasis]

As the NYT shows, Sinclair only achieved that concentration thanks to McCain’s inappropriate intervention.

Someone needs to send a copy of this to NPR. Just heard them woundering aloud about the signifance of the NYT article about McCain and Iseman. The NPR are drawing the lesson that McCain needs to avoid ‘the appearance of inpropriety.’

McCain helped a company evade the clear intent of the law, and in so doing, really concentrate its reach for such a moment when it might want to use its stations as a propaganda vehicle.

Much like McCain’s use of federal election money. Go around the law in such a way as to appear clever, and for a propaganda vehicle. No interest in following the intent of the law whatsoever. Guy’s toast.

Still on vacation here in Costa Rica(back to the cold north on Monday). It is amazing what can happen when you go to the beach for 5 days. So, my question, what, if any entity, will investigate this legally? Does this go DOJ, FCC, or P.T. Barnum?

Nice to see that neither the NYT nor the WaPo are letting this go. McCain’s given only one press conference since the NYT’s piece was published, and we already know he told multiple lies, one of which he was called out on even before the press conference ended. Mr Straight Talk is in trouble, and his opponents–most importantly Huck–haven’t decided how to take advantage of it yet.

I can’t really see the NYT letting this go. For years now they have done Bush’s bidding. Here, they obliging sat on this story for months out of deference to St. McCain’s feelings. They finally run the story, not because of any sense of journalistic ethics or pride, but to avoid being scooped. After all they have done for McCain, Bush, and Friends, to have them turn on you and call you liberal (gasp!)… Well, that’s gotta hurt. And even a Gray Lady can exhibit a bit of pique when scorned.

I suspect Huck’s strategy is just to lurk until such time as they need to ditch McCain. He’s still got to worry that the party will opt for Mitt instead of him, and Mitt also won a fair number of delegates.

Huck had one interview in which he was exceedingly gracious about McCain’s integrity (which is nice since Huck likes to get in appropriate donations, too). I bet Huck enjoyed that statement.

“woundering” works for me. I heard that NPR piece, too, and was appalled. Same old, same old MSM, looking only at the shiny surface. Not a word in the air time about McCain’s apparent use of leverage for political pals. But lots of whuffling about whether his relationship to a female lobbyist was “inappropriate.”

I have news for the MSM: Anytime a senior senator gets too cozy with a lobbyist of any sex who represents businesses that bring pleas before the committee that the senator chairs, that’s “inappropriate.”

It seems the good old boy reporters haven’t learned anything in the last 8-10 years. It’s still wink, wink, nudge, nudge and lots of leering at the skirts.

PLEASE NO! Repeat after me “NO TO JEB, NO TO JEB”. The worst problem is that this country has a habit of ignoring the opinion if people of the state who had a presidential candidate as Governor.

Why is this dirt on McCain coming out BEFORE the primary? Like 911-Ghouliani, this is TOO EARLY! Wait until he is the Rethug’s only hope! I am convinced that is what those crooks are waiting to do to the Dem candidate.

Mr. Straight Talk needs to hire Rove (if he hasn’t already) to smear the reputation of those who question McCain’s dogma, forthrightness and impeccable honesty. One thing about the GOP, they reuse and reuse their old war horses to great effect.

Dengre, over at DKos has written an article on McCain’s suppression of Abramoff documents, while the article is good, it seemed left unexplored- is there more to these documents and how can the public see them, seeing as now we know Mr. Straighttalk ain’t? Thanks in advance.

What do you know…Lowry and Mark Mays of ClearChannel have been donors to Conrad Burns.

Damn, I don’t have time to chase the correlation, either. Hope one of you is curious enough to see if any of Iseman clients also made contributions to Conrad Burns about the time that McCain and Burns hooked up on this crap.

NPR doesn’t do in-depth news any more than any other electronic media.
The other day, after we had read all afternoon about Michelle Obama’s little proud-of-my-country statement, two NPR reporters spent several minutes discussing her statement and repeatedly misquoting her, leaving out the word “really” and wondering if this would be the gaff that sinks Obama’s candidacy. The report stunk. I’ve noticed that NPR doesn’t seem to do any breakthrough reporting anymore, and they certainly steer clear of anything that will cause them to be challenged by the GOP when it comes time for congressional funding. They learned their lesson.

Is there any connection between McCain’s support for right-wing media conglomeration, and the sudden turnaround on right-wing radio supporting McCain in his travails, or at least trying to shoot the very late messengers at the NYT (and not the WaPo or Drudge)? Rush & Ingraham et al have been surprisingly pro-McCain considering their previous condemnations of St. John as worse than Hillary. Or perhaps they are just trying to defend the Republican Party indirectly and not really endorsing McCain by attacking the left-wing media. McCain has become the NoTalk Express, saying that he will no longer talk about the matter, but he has very little ability to change the subject other than his friendly reporters helping him out. If McCain manages to stagger through this, I would not be surprised to see some swiftboating on him about his many plane crashes while a Navy flier, or the Forrestall incident arising again to utterly destroy him if he doesn’t back out. To me, the issue is who will become the Republican Sargent Shriver – turning to Mitt or Huck is too divisive, Santorum or Frist don’t have the national profile or too much baggage, which leaves Colin Powell or Pataki off the top of my head.

NPR, the NewsHour, the BBC, they have all tried to play this story as bad for the Times and good for McCain. It is really bizarre that the one thing the profession of journalism does not want to do is commit an act of journalism.

McCain and the lobbyists will not go away. The blogosphere will keep the story going and the MSM plus the above will lamely follow along grumbling and badmouthing the blogs all the way.

Thanks Kirk. My doc, after sticking various optical tools down my throat and feeling up my lymph system on Thursday said something along the lines of “clean as a hound’s tooth”. Which I take, from his grin, to mean goodness. Says there’s far too much cancer and far too few satisfactory recoveries. And everyone should check out this article on Health Net getting their weenie whacked to the tune of nine mil for canceling a woman in the middle of breast cancer chemo. Cold, indeed, and now the tables are turning.

They terminated this PAC on 2/12/2008. One of their last donations was $2500 to Bearingpoint Inc: Public Services Political Action Committee. That sounds like one of the company’s Iseman was lobbying for.

Looking at PACS makes my head spin. PAC money to another PAC and then that money to another PAC.
Are they all connected at the roots?

That’s how they “washed” the money, Chrisc. More than likely you will see an inbound amount to a person from RNC, to, that matches an amount outbound from a PAC, making it very difficult to trace the intent.

You’re on the right track. There are more PAC’s like that one. Might want to look and see what bills were floating around that correlated to donations, too.

Don’t know about the current response. But certainly, the media’s unwillingness to call this what it is–support for consolidation of the media–may well explain the larger love affair with McCain in the media.

I was refused a mammogram and ultrasound when I should have been diagnosed in 1997. A friend who knows how the HMO in question operates says it was almost certainly a bonus-for-denying-care situation. Then by the time I was diagnosed in 2002, it was too late to sue.

Dengre, over at DKos has written an article on McCain’s suppression of Abramoff documents, while the article is good, it seemed left unexplored- is there more to these documents and how can the public see them, seeing as now we know Mr. Straighttalk ain’t? Thanks in advance.

YES!!! This is the blockbuster. Dengre says the 750,000 documents that McCain collected about Abramoff and the Bush Administration are locked up by a Senate deal. Can’t a prosecutor or the courts subpoena those documents?

Calling EW, bmaz, cboldt, Mary et al.! Calling TPM! This is the lynchpin! The keys to the kingdom! How can we pry these documents loose?

I was refused a mammogram and ultrasound when I should have been diagnosed in 1997. A friend who knows how the HMO in question operates says it was almost certainly a bonus-for-denying-care situation. Then by the time I was diagnosed in 2002, it was too late to sue.

It’d have been nice to make them pay 9 million for that, certainly.

EW, I’m so glad that you were able to survive– and thrive (evidence: This blog)! Your reporting/muckraking has meant a lot to me. Keep up the good work! If you don’t mind sharing, are you totally in remission now, or do you still feel like the sword of Damocles continues to hang over your head?

John McCain has made sure they [the 750,000 documents] won’t ever be released.
It is a Senate thing so it is hard to understand.
McCain has an agreement with the Democrats that the Abramoff documents held by the Indian Affairs Committee can not be released unless both sides of the aisle agree to release them. In other words, McCain has a hold on releasing any of these documents.

cboldt or anyone: Can you explain this “agreement”? Who “agreed,” and how can it be undone? Doesn’t this agreement obstruct justice?

It appears he told the truth in the deposition; it was in unsworn statements to the press where he lied. Perjury requires a material falsehood under oath. By the way, Clinton, of course, did not perjure himself in the Jones deposition. He played fast and loose, and the idiots doing the examination were too stupid to ask the germane followup and narrowing questions; but he did not criminally perjure himself. This was another right wing meme that the whole world ignorantly bought off on.

When Nina Reiser disappeared in September 2006, investigators suspecting foul play looked long and hard at her estranged husband, the computer genius Hans.
…
“Being too intelligent can be a sort of curse,” defense counsel William Du Bois said. “All this weird conduct can be explained by him, but he’s the only one who can do it.
…
After opening a company in Russia, he met Nina Sharanova, a striking obstetrician-gynecologist using a dating service to meet foreigners. They married when she became pregnant, but after the second child was born in 2001, Nina began an affair with Hans’s best friend, Sean Sturgeon. The cross-dressing bondage and discipline enthusiast had been “maid of honor” at their wedding.
…
Yet not all the strangeness in the case arises from computers. Du Bois takes every opportunity to mention Sturgeon, who in addition to his role as Hans’s friend and Nina’s lover, told investigators that he killed eight people years ago.

Rayne (and WO too) – Questions in order. Most all. Don’t know on Cs. Possible on 3p or CO, but these are good guys. Not politically attached, they just do what they do. Brother in law was a principle of the original corp that sold all this to the currently named entity last year; he’s still there for a couple of years.

BTW, are they square now with their restatement? no other surprises? Seems odd they don’t track the NASDAQ or S&P; might actually be a better bet for this reason if the market is discounting them too heavily.

No clue on any of the investment stuff (I am struggling to invest in a new roof after all the rains we have recently had here). But my BIL (a real good guy), the other main principle, and their small unique (and 100% privately held by them) company did quite well when they sold out to the bigger public corp. whose name you now see. Don’t know about the new owners, but haven’t heard anything bad. I am more curious as to how what they do fits in with all the TIA/TSP junk we discuss to see if I can glean any insights.

Thanks. 2004 would have been Sym. TS was an independent private corp until being bought out last year. I think the nook portion is Sym. The TS stuff I can discern has to do with satellites and digital FO cable (some huge ones of which apparently run underneath the southern AZ desert. If you recall my theories on our indicted congressman’s father’s company down there, you can probably see what I am trying to piece together (and also ask questions smart enough that my BIL might answer them, at least vaguely).

EW, somehow in the months of reading your blogs I missed the fact that you were a BC survivor. Best wishes! My wife’s best friend (she was my good friend too) passed away a week ago today, after an heroic fight. Helping out with the memorial service and some of the issues she left behind is one reason why I’ve been in and out all week. She, too, should have been diagnosed earlier. 6-8 months before her diagnosis (4 years ago next month) she was experiencing some discomfort and saw her primary physician. She (the doc) did a manual exam and after couldn’t find anything suggested that perhaps she needed a different bra size. Later when she had the mamogram she was determined to be “Stage 3+”.

WO, MadDog, Rayne and Minnesotachuck et al. – This here is basically what I am still trying to piece together; or maybe better put, have a renewed interest in trying to piece together. With all the datamining and domestic surveillance we now know about, I think it is a pretty decent question what the hell is going on in that enterprise in Sierra Vista.

Clear channel and Mitt Romney invovled in that buyout? I hate it that all the proggressive stations are hard to find on the radio dial as their signal strength is weaker. the conservative broadcast with a lot more power.
Does anyone have a link to FCC law? I was involved in the opening of cellular in 1980 which has an A and B carrier in each area (wireline and non wireline)like LA Chicago etc. Since that time a lot of funny dancing has gone on and those lines seem very blurred with the subs like the ones McTorture promoted, later to exploit. A good reporter might contact the losing competitors in that game to get to the real story which has gone unreported by MSN. I am guessing the same is happening to those carrier of hand held and lap top portable signals which is a huge huge market and has big ads money.
That needs linking with the desperate drive for immunity…these stories overlap into who wants immunity and what they did that needs legislative cover. Joe Lierman is holding hands on this one with McTorture 100 year war.

That is why we need universal health care NOT FOR PROFIT!!! There should never ever be an insentive for not doing ALL the preventive medicine. From a fiscal point of view it also makes sense to stop these kinds of illnesses before they go systemic. 2 (mams a year) Stupid bastards run this country…
I need to go read the Dalai Lama’s book on “Heaing Anger”. Breathe, center, focus on the rational side of the cortex. Sorry for the outburst. The poor are so screwed in America. We are lucky to have our MD heroes in the free clinics and guys like Kirk working in County facilities which are no fun. Was Michele Obama administering one of such?

No no. From a fiscal point of view, it makes very good sense to let things go to stage 2. The hospital that treated me would have gotten about 40,000 to treat me when I first found the lump, even assuming relatively aggressive treatment bc I was so young. As it was, they got at least 75,000, not counting the MRIs they’re getting me for.

I went to a conference for young women with BC once–they called us consumers, not patients.

A former Paxson Communications president said Saturday he never met with John McCain about the Arizona senator writing letters to the Federal Communications Commission regarding the regulatory delay of a Pittsburgh TV station sale.

Dean Goodman, who was in charge of the company’s lobbying efforts in 1999, told The Associated Press he also doubts that chief executive Lowell W. ”Bud” Paxson met with McCain over the issue, and said he doesn’t recall such a meeting.
…
”Whether Bud discussed it with him or not, via some other mechanism, I can’t rule it out,” Goodman added. But, he said, ”I don’t think there was a meeting.”

Marcy you hooked me with “Anatomy of Deceit” when you were on the Next Hurrah. I get more germaine revelations from emptywheel and the gathering of great poster it is the best info or time spent.
I still believe that an impeachment investigation is the best wayto air the BUSHCO dirty laundry.
No no was tougue in cheek humor I take it. So we all greatly appreciate yhe perdonal sacrifice you have to make. Thank you so so much from both sides of mu brain.

This is bizarre pushback, though. Paxson has said he met with McCain. McCain has previously testified UNDER OATH that the two of them talked. Now Goodman is saying that he (Goodman) never met with McCain, and therefore he doubts that Paxon did? Am I the only one that fails to see the logic of this?

While I’m venting, can I please call bullshit on one of McCain’s talking points? He claims that he wrote letters urging the FCC to speed up their review of some deal, and he says that this is okay, since he didn’t try to influence their decision to accept or reject the deal.

Yes, he did. He signaled to the FCC that this deal was important to him, and he wanted the decision made quickly. In Washington, that can only mean he wanted a “yes” decision. Had he wanted a “no” decision, he would have written them a letter telling them to drag their feet as much as possible.

In any event, Sturgeon reportedly has insisted that whatever his crimes, he had nothing to do with Nina’s disappearance. Wired quoted him as saying that, in the Reiser case, he is red herring, or rather, he said, “a red Sturgeon.”

“It strikes me that a lot of coders have a somewhat detached view of the world, and it’s reasonable to assume that Hans might not even have stopped to think about how things looked,” said Rick Moen, a local area network consultant in Menlo Park.

considering that inter alia “things” include soaked floorboards and a notable lack of interest in the search for his missing wife.

Make suitable changes at “coders” and “Hans” and you’ve got a pretty good if mild commentary on people who thought McCain, e.g., should be running for President.

Charlie Black, who serves as McCain’s chief political adviser, “is chairman of one of Washington’s lobbying powerhouses, BKSH and Associates, which has represented AT&T, Alcoa, JPMorgan and U.S. Airways.” Though he is currently playing a prominent role in the McCain campaign, Black “is still being paid by his firm.”

On Friday, Black told the National Journal that he doesn’t think his continued lobbying is a problem for the anti-lobbying image of his “client,” John McCain:

I think the title of ew’s post assembles some important features of the McCain campaign in 2008. It is worthwhile, as well to review the tv media ownership dynamic historically as the dotcom expansion taper began, synchronizing with the then approaching 2000 campaigns, with respect to the kinds of disputes and spectrum plans fcc was anticipating at that time. Reed Hundt’s tenure ended, and Kennard’s was to brook the chasm between the Clinton and Bush presidencies; soon it became clear where Powell intended to take the agency. Having both television market oversight and internet planning watchdogging emanate from the same commission is a way to balance fcc’s portfolio; so some measure of the easing of Paxson’s road to micromonopoly was riding that inevitable wave of consolidation, yet in a way, for Kennard’s span, which would continue to foster controls on wider oligarchism in public media. There is more to find in this topic; it is excellent timing that already it has denatured McCains’ facade of imperviousness to influence peddling. My reading of his campaign regulatory reform is its actual content is similarly vacuous, simply if one compares the title of the final law to the effects intended by the details of the law contents.

fyi, Just left this as #95 on Rick Renzi thread:
re usefullness, immediate or future, of personnel placed in position:

L. Fletcher Prouty [played by D.Sutherland in movie JFK] wrote The Secret Team in the 1970’s outlining just this scenario. Reading it will preclude doing repetitive spadework. The nuggets are there to be used.